Delicate China
Two thoughts after reading this:
The Chinese government has defied international anger at its crackdown on Tibetan independence protests, accusing the Dalai Lama and his “splittist clique” of being out to destroy the Olympics and damage China’s international reputation.
a) You’ll never go broke appealing to the lowest common denominator. ‘Hey, you in the decadent West. The Dalai Lama wants to ruin your running and jumping about, the bastard,’ says China.
b) What international reputation? We know they’re bastards but we’re addicted to cheap tat. They could build a Death Star in high orbit if they like, we’re not going to rock the boat. It’s why we’re not seeing wider outrage. If it was Cuba doing this, people would be going ballistic.
Posted on March 23rd, 2008 at 8:31 am
If the Dalai Lama did manage to destroy the Olympics he would have my undying gratitude.
(Ta for the PaperRound link BTW
It’s invariably amusing when a country which doesn’t have internal freedom of expression tries to justify itself to countries which do. They just can’t get it right. Last year China banned monks from reincarnating without getting permission first.
[...] by cabalamat on 2008-Mar-24 Justin McKeating at Chicken Yoghurt explains why the Chinese government’s repression in Tibet won’t meet with international [...]
It’s true, why should China care about its international reputation when it’s pretty poor already? Well I suspect one reason might be the growing numbers of (mainly elite) Chinese working/being educated abroad. We can’t have people exposed to ideas other than state sanctioned ones can we?
Couldn’t agree more.
Indeed, I think I nicked your “running and jumping” image when I posted on this last night - but it wasn’t deliberate.